By Jo Glover The Framework Holding Your Service Together (even when it doesn't feel like it) Most operational leaders I speak to right now aren't struggling because they lack commitment. They're struggling because they can't see the whole picture at once and feel like they are firefighting all the time. There's a governance issue over here. A workforce gap over there. Data they don't have time to read. A team that needs more from them than they have left to give. And somewhere underneath all...
23 days ago • 3 min read
By Jo Glover Late in 2025, I completed Brené Brown's Dare to Lead workshop alongside leaders from different organisations and industries. By mid-morning on day one, I noticed something I recognised immediately. On paper we were all very different. Different sectors, different roles, different contexts. But the weight we were carrying? Almost identical. Significant responsibility, limited resources, complex stakeholders, and people looking to us for steadiness in the middle of uncertainty. And...
about 1 month ago • 4 min read
By Jo Glover The Meeting Overload Problem Look at most health operations leaders’ calendars right now and you will see back-to-back meetings from early morning until late afternoon. And yet decisions are still slow. Actions are rolling over. Staff are exhausted. And the real work — the thinking, the planning, the follow-up, the team support — keeps getting pushed to the edges of the day. We are busy. We are connected. We are coordinated. But we are not necessarily moving. That is the meeting...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
By Jo Glover The 4 Cs of brave leadership There is a myth in leadership that holds many good people back. It is the idea that confidence comes first. That before we apply for the role, have the difficult conversation, lead the change, or step into something bigger, we should feel fully ready. But that is rarely how growth works. Most of us do not start with confidence. We start with uncertainty. We start with doubt. We start with that uncomfortable feeling of not quite knowing whether we can...
2 months ago • 3 min read
By Jo Glover Strategic Headspace: How Busy Mid-Level Leaders Can Carve Out Time to Think (Without Dropping the Ball) I was in a busy Operations Director role and wanted to take my next step and the feedback I received was ‘I am too operational and could not understand as I thought I was strategic but then one day it dawned on me - I was always looking ‘into’ the services and never outside at the bigger picture! If you are a mid-level health or government leader, your week probably starts...
3 months ago • 6 min read
The Health Operations Playbook By Jo-Glover Edition 9: Proximity: It matters more than we think! Proximity matters! We often think growth comes from more knowledge. Another course. Another framework. Another book. But sometimes growth comes from something much simpler — and much more powerful. Who you are close to. The people around us shape what feels normal, what feels possible, and what standard we hold ourselves to. In leadership, that matters more than we often realise. As Jim Rohn once...
3 months ago • 3 min read
The Health Operations Playbook By Jo-Glover Inbox@Zero: A 10‑minute habit for calmer leadership Hi [First name] If you opened this email already half-thinking about the 147 unread messages waiting for you, you are not alone. In health operations, inbox creep is quiet but relentless. It starts as a few unread emails on a Monday and becomes a three-digit wall of noise by Friday. Somewhere in between, your focus, energy, and decision-making bandwidth disappear. Most leaders I work with do not...
4 months ago • 2 min read
The Health Operations Playbook By Jo-Glover Finance: When Quality is Strong and People are Well, the Money Follows Finance can feel like another language in healthcare—full of acronyms, price weights, and packs that land late in the month like a mild threat. This edition is deliberately a simplified view. Funding rules, local quirks, and reporting lines vary widely across services and states. The leadership move is not to “become finance”. It is to partner well with it. If you take one action...
4 months ago • 6 min read
The Health Operations Playbook By Jo-Glover Every health service I know is being trying to “improve access and flow” and reduces the queues (ramping!). But there are queues everywhere: queues to get into ED - Ramping! queues to get out of ICU! queues to get a bed - Exit Block queues to get a scan - Diagnostic waitlists queues to get a clinic appointment - Wait Lists queues to get out (because community, aged care, NDIS, housing… pick your constraint) - Stranded! But here’s the truth we don’t...
4 months ago • 2 min read